Parisians are rightfully proud of their city’s beauty. They can confidently lay claim to living in one of those cities where a landmark can be found on practically every corner. This situation makes the French metropolis a highly popular travel destination. The first-time visitor to Paris is more or less certain to visit the city’s main landmark.

One of the world’s mostvisited monuments

The 324-metre-high Eiffel Tower was built as a monumental entrance gate and observation tower for the 1889 World’s Fair, to give visitors a view over the entire exhibition area. At the time of construction, Parisians were hesitant in their enthusiasm for the iron lattice tower. Despite the initial resentment, however, the Eiffel Tower has since evolved into an icon of the engineer’s craft and now receives seven million visitors a year, making it one of the world’s most-visited monuments.

Competition to redesign the first visitor platform

In 2008, the Eiffel Tower’s operating company decided to carry out renovation work on the tower costing 25 million euros. A competition has been announced to redesign the first visitor platform. The original areas for visitor information, souvenir shop, restaurant and conference areas were to be dismantled and rebuilt. In 2010, the French architecture firm Moatti et Rivière emerged as winners of the competition. Their entry consists of two pavilion-like structures embedded into the lattice supports, unfolding over two floors and each covering an area of 600 square metres. Both the wall and floor areas are being reinforced with glass, giving visitors the impression of floating at a height of 57 metres over Paris.

1200 square metres of crosslaminated timber

In the floor area, cross-laminated timber panels are used. These are particularly suited to this project due to their thin cross-section of only 95 millimetres in a five-layer structure, their ability to be used as a material in dry construction, and their light weight. In total, 1200 square metres of cross-laminated timber are being used. That comes to three full lorryloads. Lignatec, the French representative of the Austrian company KLH, was heavily involved in the proposal stage together with the technical firm Sechaud Bossuyt. The project started off last year – construction progress is good: in summer 2013 the first pavilion is being handed over, and the second will follow in 2014.